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On Thursday, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing came to town to meet with the mayor and deliver nearly $4.7 million from the Building Faster Fund. Paul Calandra was ebullient with his praise, and despite the threat of rain, and a history of acerbic back and forth between city hall and Queen’s Park, the courtyard ceremony was a very positive affair.
But I have some notes.
First, the Ontario government literally calls the Building Faster Fund a “reward” for municipalities that meet their very ambitious housing targets, which were set while the Province undermined the effort by cutting development fees and re-writing planning acts (and sometimes even writing them back). And if using the word “reward” doesn’t already gamify the housing crisis, Calandra comes to town with a giant novelty cheque.
But it wasn’t always this pleasant or transactional. Although Calandra said that he and Cam Guthrie had some contentious phone conversations, they were ultimately very constructive and informative. The minister also had praise for the team at Guelph who all pulled together to get the Royal City to 98 per cent of the way to the annual housing goal in 2023.
But what about this comment from Doug Ford last fall?
“I like your mayor, he just can’t get up there and make a decision, so he always wants to pile it onto the province. He’s a good guy actually, I like him. But your whole council in Guelph are a bunch of left-wing lunatics. Simple as that.”
I got the chance to ask Calandra about the premier’s comments just six months ago in October and whether Ford was wrong about his assessment of Guelph council’s ability in the wake of this ceremony for success. In characterizing Caladra’s response, the phrase “word salad” comes to mind.
I also asked Calandra about Guelph council’s request that the Ontario government take a housing pledge of their own. Last year when council agreed to get 18,000 homes built by 2031, they added that it can only be done if the province holds up their end with funding, changes to the Ontario Land Tribunal, support for provincially controlled infrastructure like hospitals and schools, and progress on brownfield remediation.
Calandra was ambivalent here too, despite the fact that he was asked the question one more time after me. His answer was basically a boiler plate comment about how the Ontario government is spending like fiends on infrastructure while talking about how the goal is just to get “shovels in the ground”, a phrase used no less than a dozen times in his comments.
As usual, I have my doubts if this announcement, and it’s accompanying pomp, will have the effect it’s supposed to have. How much “housing enabling infrastructure” does $4.7 million really buy? Especially when staff now have to invest precious time developing a plan on how to spend that money, which then has to be submitted to the ministry for approval.
I remain committed to a thought I previously articulated in this column, I think we should take all this money we get from the provincial and federal governments and just cut the Pinocchio strings that come with it and buy some housing for people. It’s worth noting that almost everything done on the development of more housing has been directed at the open marker, which was already unaffordable for so many people in our community for years before the supposed start of the housing crisis.
The exercise with Calandra this week is emblematic of the short term think that plagues our politics, like gremlins pulling the wires out of the plane engine midflight, but it wasn’t the only kind of short term think happening at city hall this week.
As reported in GuelphToday (and confirmed by me since I saw the email from the CAO himself), new capital projects and staff hiring has been put on pause in the wake of Guthrie’s “Strong Mayor” directive to get the 2025 budget under four per cent. This is the correct move logistically, but it’s root cause, the mayor’s directive, completely undermines the point of multi-year budgeting and council oversight.
It also undermines some of the philosophical tenets of budgeting that are frequently brandied about in the council chambers, the idea that budgets are moral documents that identify what council thinks is important, and how it’s the gas pedal for enacting the priorities outlined in the Strategic Plan. I guess, it’s the emergency brake too.
Beyond the philosophy though, there’s also the fact that our present budget crunch is owed to the inclination to put off till tomorrow all the things that prevent the annual city budget increase from coming in at three per cent or less every year.
The new main library you hate costed one-fifth less than it does now 20 years ago when you still thought it was too expensive to build. We’re frantically building new social housing after doing nothing for three decades. We complain about the roads getting fixed while also complaining about the roads not getting fixed, and it’s leadership that’s supposed to cut through this noise to make the tough decisions and do what’s right for the city.
Leadership is the big missing piece, which is by design when it comes to the “Strong Mayor” powers because it’s an admission that democracy doesn’t work so why even bother with building consensus. As mentioned recently in this space, by the time March is over, there will have been only three council meetings this month, so is there really no time to have a proper airing about the mayor’s ideas in front of the full council so that we, the public, can hear both the questions and the answers?
This is the hard work of governing, but we have to ask the question if there’s even an appetite for such as a thing as governing anymore. Why bother when you can get powers to impose your will and then celebrate with a big cheque for money we should be getting to address a supposed crisis in the first place?
If I want a game show, I’ll turn on the TV. We go to city hall for leadership, maybe we’ll see some soon.
